No Man's Sky

[Dweller_Benthos]

New update coming this Wednesday:

https://atlascodex.space/no-mans-sky-news/beyond-release-date-and-everything-we-know-so-far/

It's a big one. Probably going to reset the universe again, and change all the planets. A necessary evil, I think. Supposedly the planets will be more varied and not all just the same thing over the entire surface. We shall see. A bunch of other things too, NPC characters on stations and trading posts will be walking around, not just stuck in one place. That will be nice. I wonder if the crew of my freighter will walk around too? That would be awesome. Even though it's really only cosmetic (I think) and doesn't really affect the game in a significant way, it will give things more life.

You'll be able to put a saddle on pretty much any creature after taming it and ride it around. People are already talking about big alien crab races, making race tracks, etc. Oh yeah, you'll be able to get milk from them too. Ahem. Not sure what you will do with the milk, but there you go.

Ship customization! Finally! YAY!! Please, please let us change the paint color and markings of a ship, and maybe even mix and match ship parts to make our own ships? But even just being able to change the paint job will be nice.

More base building options. A huge update to multiplayer, large "Nexus" hubs to meet up with other players, go on missions, etc. We shall see how that works out.

Not sure if there's any change or addition to the main story but I see no mention of it so I doubt it.

But it's nice to have a huge new update to look forward to.

[Art Blade]

interesting. Now that you mentioned "AI walking around" do I realise that indeed, they haven't. Except wild life. So yes, would be cool indeed

And absolutely agree on customising ships. Paint jobs, ship parts.. would be awesome

[Dweller_Benthos]

OK it's been a week so here's a report on the latest update. It's a bit buggy, unfortunately, in some cases really bad bugs but they have already released two or three hot fixes for the worst ones. Even though they mentioned specifically that you'd be able to change the key bind for any action, that isn't the case, in fact, it's the exact opposite, you can't change ANY keybinds, the entire system is locked out and all the keybinds are listed as blank, so you can't even look up what action is bound to what. So that's obviously a disappointment, and I'm sure they will fix it, but it's annoying none the less. In the meantime, I'm using Auto Hot Key to change my binds while in game so I can at least play.

The new Nexus hub is also bugged, though it's hit or miss, some players report no issues with it, other report that upon leaving by the teleporter from there, that their base and/or freighter will either disappear or no longer belong to you. I haven't had that issue luckily, but then I heard about the teleporter being wonky and haven't used it. One issue I did encounter was when leaving the Nexus by ship, you sometimes go through the exit door and appear in space in the system you left but you no longer have a ship and you're just floating there where you eventually die. Only fix is to load the last save game, so now I always save right before leaving.

Went back to my base and like everyone else, found that all my landing pads were no longer there, because the landing pad model has changed. A bit of a minor annoyance as I had to rebuild them, only to find they are larger now and no longer fit where they did before and also no longer "snap" to other base pieces like they used to.

Also found that now bases need a power system and any equipment you have there won't w0#k because it has no power. You have to build generators and batteries, and wire them together and then hook it all up to your base to get power. Doors need a power signal and a set of switches to make them w0#k automatically. Many people are complaining about this as it essentially forces you to learn how to wire circuits and use logic gates just to make a door w0#k. I'm not too fond of it myself, as there's a lot more fiddling to make each door w0#k where you used to be able to just place them and they would w0#k.

Then there's the issue of power, you can make a generator fairly easily, but it needs fuel, so either you need to check it all the time or run out, so then there's solar panels which of course only w0#k during the day so better hope you have enough batteries to last the night. There's also special spots in the world you can scan for that provide power, but so far I haven't found one. Once you do, you can place a generator there for limitless power, but you then have to run wires back to your base or move. There's also resource nodes for gasses and metals that you can place auto miners on to get you large amounts of resources, though I haven't had the use for these yet so I haven't bothered.

So, there's a lot in the update but also a lot that doesn't w0#k yet, anyone thinking of trying it I would say give it another month to settle in with updates. Might also be a good idea to start a fresh new game as it seems as usual that most of the problems are from old games like mine. If you start new then everything is in place already as you go and progression is more natural. There's still the bugs, sure, but those will be taken care of hopefully.

[Art Blade]

man.. when you look at how old this game is now, and how it still hasn't started to w0#k properly, I wonder what on earth is wrong with the devs' analysis regarding the priorities of the game fixes. Instead of fixing stuff, they make things that used to be somewhat fun like the base building although it was completely unnecessary and now they complicated it much more than it was, added wiring and power requirements and reshaped landing pads so even existing ones no longer w0#k.. the only thing they managed is to screw over the players once more and ruined every base out there that had been build by players who actually bothered to play this game. Spawning outside stations to die in space? That was one of the earliest bugs, I remember how I couldn't leave a space station just because of that. Great development.

They should focus on fixing bugs, nothing else,  release those bug fixes to make sure the community response is positive and only THEN continue with new content. And man, they really should stop changing stuff that's out there, like all of a sudden you need a different modding tool, need to mine stuff with different mining mods, all that stuff, now the changes they made to the base building.. WHAT THE.

I think I won't return to this game, like, ever? I'm now considering to uninstall it for good. In my opinion the game was good when it was new except for pirates. An option to set pirate activities from none over some to many would have been perfect, some bug fixes and all would have been good. What they made instead hasn't increased my gaming experience for the better. On the contrary, it got worse every time.

[Dweller_Benthos]

A lot of people have the same reaction, especially to base building. It's really too bad as the game is now, excluding bugs, is pretty decent. Imagine if they had done an early access release three years ago and said, "Hey, this is what we have now, but expect it to change" and then had these incremental releases still in early access. There would have been no controversy, people would expect to have to restart the game when a new update came out because that's what happens in early access. I probably would have played it a bit then let it sit for three years like Subnautica, and then played it when it was fully released. But at this point I'm not really willing to start a new game even though a lot of people do just that. So I continue with my old game and muddle through.

Too bad, it could have been handled much better.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Another update yesterday and they fixed key binding! YAY! But... (you just knew there was going to be a but, right?) it's just a little bit bugged, not bad, but enough to be annoying. If you rebind certain keys, then the mouse wheel no longer works in certain menus. For instance, rebinding the keys for menu navigation makes the mouse wheel no longer w0#k in the build menu, but it still works in the quick menu, so go figure that. Since the mouse wheel is the easiest way to use the build menu, I'm putting up with it until they hopefully fix it, as I posted a bug report last night about it. Same goes for using the mouse wheel in any other menu, which you could never do before anyway, if you rebind certain menu navigation keys, that no longer works.

Another oversight, in the key binds menu screen, the button to erase a key bind totally and have that action unbound is X, which means you can't bind anything to X because as soon as you do, it erases the bind and leaves it blank.  So I posted a bug report about that too, though at least that's fixable by manually editing the keybinds file, which at least is now easy to navigate, things are labeled to what they do and binds are written in plain text and not ASCII code or whatever it was before. So that's also an improvement, even if it's so you can fix the bugs in the main system.   

[Art Blade]

oh man. Sounds as if they let five-year-old programmers do their stuff.

[Art Blade]

and another update today. They keep pushing out updates on a daily basis now it would seem. Makes me wonder, did they dissolve their QA team and leave the testing to the paying customers entirely? If they ever had a QA department, that is. Feedback from gamers regarding newest patch, "bugged." Oh, need to fix what they reported, update coming up. Rinse and repeat.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah a lot of complaints on Reddit, about how much or little testing they did on this. I mean, sure, it's a big update, practically re-writes the entire game, but really, if you're going to brag about something in the update notes (e.g. the fully customizable key binds) then at least make sure that works, eh? And doesn't outright cause a crash, I mean really.

But having said that, I played about 6 hours over the weekend, and finally "ended" the game by going to the next galaxy. I never did that before because it was a one-way trip and you couldn't get back to your old base. This update now allows that, by any station teleporter, so going to other galaxies doesn't have that drawback anymore. I haven't explored there much yet, but its the one with supposedly more "lush" planets. Maybe I'll find a place to make a new better base.

Speaking of the base, I got my power situation figured out, mostly because I found out you can put down more than one generator on a power node, so you can have almost limitless power. This is after, of course, I ran a new set of power lines to another node, but hey, that wasn't too bad. Another thing I found out was that because of the landing pads being bigger now, they of course don't fit where they used to, so that's a bummer, but also a bummer is that you can place a landing pad, but it won't "snap" to existing base parts, you have to place the landing pad and then "snap" the base parts to it, so if you're building a new base, no big deal really, but modifying and old base is a bit awkward. I got it working though, well enough anyway, and I still have fun crashing around while racing my motorbike to a destination.

Oh, and on my home planet, I had always searched for the last two animals to complete the survey and get the bonus, and I had found one marked rare and was still looking for the other, and I finally found it, I've only seen two so far, and that's lucky because they are the predatory type that likes to attack you. But I've never seen any around my base, so I don't have them attacking all the time, and even out and about they aren't anything to worry about. Along with non-existent sentinels, the place is fairly comfortable.

[Art Blade]

hehe, if you want to build a shopping mall, start with planning and building the car park and continue planning and building around it. Yeah, sure..

Jumping between galaxies? OK, so that is interesting. I might check whether or not I still got my old savegame that contains several galaxies I had passed through..

[Dweller_Benthos]

I haven't tried it yet, but my main base is listed on the station's teleporter, so I should be able to go back. But I've heard that the station you teleport from won't be listed once you get there because of a bug with station teleporters in other galaxies, so the fix is to build a quick base with a teleporter of your own and you should be able to then teleport between galaxies.

[Art Blade]

haha, oh man.. thanks for that tip. And really, did they ever test their stuff?

[Dweller_Benthos]

Doesn't seem like it. Testing that is. Anyway, started building a new base in the new galaxy but didn't finish it yet to see if I can teleport between bases, should be able to, but you never know.

Also, if the issue ever comes up, the save game editor is updated, so it should still w0#k to "fix" some "issues" if the need arises. Ahem.

[Art Blade]

ah, thanks

[Dweller_Benthos]

Finished the new galaxy base but went exploring instead of going home, I'll see how that works eventually. I haven't even tried taming an animal yet or riding them, plus there's the whole farming livestock stuff that I haven't even unlocked yet.